Adaptec Launches Max IQ™ SSD Cache Performance Solution for Maximum Application Acceleration in Data Centre Environments

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA –September 10, 2009 — Adaptec, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADPT) today announced the first solution for building and managing High-Performance Hybrid Arrays (HPHAs) - storage arrays that use both solid-state drives (SSDs) and hard disk drives (HDDs) - delivering up to five times the I/O performance, up to 50 percent savings in capital and operating expenses, and a dramatic reduction in power consumption over HDD-only arrays. Adaptec’s new MaxIQ™ SSD Cache Performance Solution integrates a tuned 32GB Intel X25-E Extreme SATA SSD, used as high-performance cache, with Adaptec’s MaxIQ SSD caching software to provide I/O intensive data centre and cloud computing customers with cost-effective scalability without disrupting existing operations.

The Adaptec MaxIQ SSD Cache Performance Solution represents the next phase in Adaptec’s Data Conditioning Platform strategy, an innovative approach to deliver business value to data centre managers by intelligently routing, optimising and protecting data as it moves through the I/O path. The strategic decision to partner with Intel underscores Adaptec’s commitment to developing easy-to-integrate, standards-based I/O solutions to meet large-scale computing challenges in demanding IT environments.

“By incorporating Intel’s SSDs into our MaxIQ solution, we’re able to offer data centre managers, particularly those running massive on-demand cloud computing data centres, a non-disruptive, scalable approach to managing storage with maximum application performance and reduced capital and operating costs,” said S. “Sundi” Sundaresh, Adaptec president and CEO.  “Adaptec MaxIQ underscores the potential that we see for significant future management and conditioning of data through the I/O path, which is central to our new Data Conditioning Platform strategy.”

“We have entered an era in data centre operations where escalating performance and energy demands requires the integration of technologies to ensure uninterrupted system performance and ongoing financial viability,” said Pete Hazen, director of product marketing, Intel NAND Solutions Group. “Data centre managers will have the opportunity to easily leverage the value and extreme performance of the Intel high performance SSDs to dramatically scale performance to meet the needs of their growing user base, in a non-intrusive and affordable manner.”

Adaptec MaxIQ SSD Caching Software and High-Performance Hybrid Arrays (HPHA)

HPHAs built on the Adaptec MaxIQ SSD Cache Performance Solution deliver up to five times faster performance than HDD-only arrays, and can provide capital and operating cost savings of up to 50 percent. Depending on individual data centre requirements, an HPHA can consist of any combination of high-capacity, low-cost SATA (Serial ATA) drives or higher-performing SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) drives, plus SSDs. The result is a cost-effective, scalable hybrid storage solution that can deliver the highest I/Os per dollar at the lowest dollars per gigabyte.

The MaxIQ SSD Caching Software includes a patent-pending “Learned-Path^” algorithm that identifies frequently (hot) read data blocks and optimises subsequent “reads” by moving “hot” data directly into the SSD cache for lower latencies and higher system performance. By leveraging its unique presence in the data path to create a “read cache pool”, a high-performance hybrid array with a single MaxIQ SSD cache can deliver up to five times the IOPS (input/output per second) of comparable SAS-only deployments. The result is a dramatic acceleration in application performance, alleviating the bottleneck that can occur between server processors and hard drives, allowing data centre managers to increase the number of users hosted per IT dollar, reduce the need for additional equipment acquisition and significantly cut data centre energy costs. 

MaxIQ is ideal for data centres running applications with high “read” demands such as web serving, file serving and databases. MaxIQ can be deployed using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware, allowing data centres to convert industry-standard servers into cost-effective, high-performance, scale-out application storage appliances that require no modification of existing storage architectures, application software or operating systems for easy integration. It also offers simple and flexible expandability allowing up to four additional SSDs to be added to, or removed from, the cache pool without impacting data integrity or operations.  

 Paired with Adaptec Series 5Z, Series 5 or Series 2 Unified Serial (SATA/SAS) Storage Controllers, the MaxIQ SSD Cache Pe